Natural Cosmetics, and Summer Camp

My soapmaking course participants prevailed upon me to teach a Natural Cosmetics course, so I'm planning to run it as an evening course, on June 14th.


It will be at Mullingar Educate Together from 7:00pm to 10:00pm
Cost is €35.

Participants will learn how to make Bath bombs and other bath products, Massage oils, Body creams, Exfoliants, and will make origami boxes to package them in. All materials will be provided, including a wide variety of essentials oils to scent the products. You will go home with clear recipes so you can make them on your own, or with your friends and family.


I'm also getting ready for a Science and Nature Summer camp for 7-12 year olds - at the same location. Working on some interesting projects - getting inspiration from this site - the school gym would be an excellent location for walkalong glider flying, and learning about what keeps airplanes in the air....

To book either, email annambrowne@gmail.com or phone me - 087 2222562

Midlands Home and Garden Festival 2010

This weekend I'll be speaking at the Midlands Home and Garden Festival 2010, taking place in Belvedere, Mullingar, Co Westmeath.

I'll be speaking on Sunday at 4:00pm - I'll be talking about gardening with kids. Maybe I'll see you there?

Sun, Snacks, Science - Summer Camp Mullingar , Co. Westmeath

Summer Camp details are finalised.
It's called Sun, Snacks and Science. While I can't promise the sun, our days will be structured so that we make the most of any dry time to go outside in the school garden.

Summer Camp for 8-12+ year olds, Mon-Fri 10:00am-2:00pm
Cost €70 per week. If 2 kids from the same family book, the price goes down to €130
Week 1 - July 19-23rd,
Week 2 - July 26th-30th

Depending on the weather, we'll have activities inside or outside - harvesting from the school garden, cooking and eating what we harvest, making bath bombs, paper making, seed saving, vermiculture, composting, pond dipping, mini beast hunt, physics experiments, seed planting in recycled paper pots, making ginger ale, scavenger hunt, nature awareness. The week will culminate with the students making pizza for themselves. Parents welcome to join in for the pizza eating on the last day.

I will keep adding new activities as I think of them. The garden is looking great at the moment, and there are plenty of bugs in evidence. We had our pride of place judging yesterday - waiting with bated breath to hear how we got on. The students did a stellar job of presenting all of Natures riches that we have in the garden.

To Book contact Anna Browne at 087 2222562 0r email annambrowne@gmail.com

Competition at Belvedere Self Sufficiency show

Took a trip out to belvedere, and have staked out my area with some of my new bunting. The vegetable garden out there is looking great, and from talking with Bartle, they have an excellent weekend planned for young and old. Dale Treadwell will be there, and a clown, not to mention fly fishing demos, pigs, plants, and bread. I'll have 2 activities at my stand - making paper pots and planinting seeds in them, and bath bomb making.

I'm planning a competition also - come by my stand and enter to win a selection of sustainable produced goodies - Jam, Chutney, Marmalade, Soaps, Bath bombs, Body Lotion, 2 Tomato plants, and 6 runner bean plants.

The draw will take place on Sunday - I'll be speaking at 4:00pm about bread making, and will do the draw during the talk. I may have some runner up prizes for people attending the talk also.

Mullingar Summer Camp

In addition to my classes for grown ups, I'm going to run a Summer Camp this year. Can't decide whether to call it Gardening and Cooking, or Science and Maths - we'll cover all 4 topics, and have a blast where we're doing it. There are a lot of fun activities we can do, and I keep thinking of new ones.

Summer Camp for 8-12 year olds, Mon-Fri 10:00am-1:30pm
Learn about Science and Maths through Gardening and Cooking
Week 1 - July 19-23rd, Week2 - July 26th-30th,

We’ll choose from the following activities depending on the weather – harvesting from the school garden, cooking and eating what we harvest, making bath bombs, paper making, seed saving, vermiculture, composting, pond dipping, mini beast hunt, physics experiments, seed planting in recycled paper pots, making ginger ale, scavenger hunt, nature awareness. The week will culminate with the students making pizza for themselves. Parents welcome to join in for the pizza eating on the last day.

To Book contact Anna Browne at 087 2222562 0r email annambrowne@gmail.com

Published

A good start to February - GIY (Grow It Yourself) is an organisation which has been snowballing in popularity here in Ireland in the past year or less. They have an excellent website where they share tips, build community, let people know about local meetings.

And now, one of the people writing articles for that website is me! I'm doing a series about gardening with kids - something very close to my heart - see the first article here.

Planting Broad beans

 

It's a bit later than last year, but inspired by the sunshine, and the fact that I start teaching soon, and with the help of my trusty undergardeners, who are on a half day from school, we have the broad beans planted. We have ignored the planting dates on the pachets, and planted Aquadulce Claudia, and the Sutton - both varieties did well from a Jan 1st sowing last year.

I soaked the broad bean seeds overnight - this will accelerate the germination. And it's so promising to see them plump up. And tried to organise my seeds (see my tiny plot for a good method), and found lots of other broad bean varieties. So I think I'll be planting a lot more of these over the coming weeks. They are a great early cropper, and you can eat the tips, the tiny seed pods before they fill out, and the seeds - so the more the better. And popping them open to see them nestled in their downy pods in a great job for all the family.

Plant sale - date for your diary

On Saturday, June 13th, there will be a School fund raiser for Educate Together National school. Starting at around 2:30, it takes place on the ground of the school, beside the mullingar harriers club and Ardleigh.

With 5th class, we have been preparing lots of interesting plants, and they will be for sale on the day. Lots of delicious food, games, child friendly atmosphere. All welcome - hope to see you there!

School update

School is out for Easter break, and lots planted in the past while. Earlier this week, we finished the raspberry planting - we now have 26 autumn fruiting raspberries in.

Earlier we planted 6 blueberry bushes, and more than 12 strawberries. And 3 rhubarb plants. In the wildlife bed, we have several currant bushes, and a josterberry and 2 apple trees. (We also have some Jerusalem artichoke in there).


Today we planted ot some 4 week old peas - they were looking good - especially the ones which got the worm tea. Just in case there's frost or slug damage, I planed another pea beside them, and some onions around them.

We have 8 or 9 huge pots with spuds - they have gone home with the teachers and parents, and hopefully will return to the school in good shape.

There will be a feast - or multiple - at some point in the near future...

Learning never tasted so good

If you didn't catch the slot on New2Day on RTE 2, or at the end of the SixOne news, here's the link to the video archive.

It's a wrap!

The filming is finished, and the segment should air tomorrow Tuesday 24th, on RTE 2 on the news slot before the den - 4:50pm or so. Can't wait to see how it turns out - we had a great time making it!

TV update

All going well, the team from RTE will arrive at METNS at 12 on Monday, and the spot will air on the kids news show before the Den on RTE 2 at 4:50 or so, and then again as part of 6one on RTE 1. I'll update again on Monday, after I come back to earth...

RTE coming!

Looks like RTE's midland correspondent - Ciaran Mulooley - will be visiting us (METNS) on Monday to see what the students have been learning about gardening. No idea when it will be broadcast - and kind of don't believe that it will really happen- watch this space for updates!

Weird Beet

 

Lousy photo, but this beet was bifurcated, and equally on both side, so it looked strangely human - lower body. But we ate it anyhow....

The Giant Potato plant

As I mentioned before, I gave the boys a bed to plant some things in. They each planted a potato which had sprouted in the kitchen (not a special seed potato). Initially Dara's was doing well, but the slugs got it, and then it started to turn yellow, so we dug it up and ate the spuds.

Leo's - after a slow start - really took off, and now it's a good size (see above - as big as he is) - and still no flowers - so we're in no hurry to harvest it. We think it's down to a combination of chicken manure, worm castings and worm tea - and maybe Leo's green fingers. Growing beside it is a very healthy yelly ildi cheery tomato - which promises to have a great crop also.
Everyone who visits gets a tour of the garden (conducted by Dara and Leo), featuring these magnificent specimens!

Here's what this plot looked like before (from above)

And here's what it looks like now (Giant spud plant from above)

Best Brocolli

 We had 3 excellent Calabrese plants, this one was the best. Leo is proudly holding it. I didn't leave the plants in the ground after we harvested the central one, though that might have resulted in side shoots - but they are huge plants, and we don't have a shortage of plants to harvest at the moment.
Interestingly, I planted Calabrese and purple sprouting at the same time - Feb/March - but it looks like the Calabrese has a much shorter cycle. The PSB doesn't seem to be doing anything interesteing yet, though they are growing big (and overshadowing everything else in the bed beside them)

 

Fresh Herbal teas

Last week we were in Donegal in the most wonderful self-catering house - if you like gardening - more about that later. Anyhow we were visiting our cousins who live nearby, and drinking tea - as you do. I can't really handle caffeine at all, and no one had any herbal teas. So I went outside to see if I coudl find any mint in the garden.

Sadly, there was no mint, but then I remembered that chamomile grows well in yards, so I foind some of that in a fairly clean place. Rinsed it off, poured boiling water over it and voila - delicious chamomile tea! My cousins, who are all farmers in one way or another, would know chamomile as a weed that colonises areas where there's no grass. They think it's hilarious that people pay for dried bags of something which grows so prolifically. The other funny thing is we tried to grow chamomile in the school, but were not successful - too much care, I suppose.

In our wanderings, we found some Russian Chamomile on the roadside - that's a bit rarer, so I brought a root of that home to grow.


Still had the yen for mint tea, so when I got home I took care of that, and I have drinking fresh mint tea at work all week - tastes a lot better than dried.

Now I'm inspired to make some herbal teas in school next year - from herbs it will be easy to grow - and who knows, if we choose the right ones, they may have a calming effect on the students!

Here's a good link to the wild chamomile -
http://www.slashfood.com/2008/06/19/backyard-tea-pineapple-weed/

Gardening with kids

 
When you first have children, it seems like your gardening days at over for ever - a few moments snatched after bed, during naptime. But then they start to walk, and once they get over being grossed out by slugs and bugs, gardening with children can be quite enjoyable.

I have 2 boys - Dara and Leo, age 3 and 6. That's Dara above, with his fine potato plant. This year, we put in raised beds, and I set up one of the beds for the boys. Thay have planted potatoes, tomatoes, some flowers - Sunflower, french marigold. Dara grew the flowers from seeds.

As I have mentioned before, they get good mileage out of collecting slugs to feed to the tadpoles - a real win-win. They love looking at the worms in the wormery. This year Dara has become proficient at repotting seedlings, which is no mean feet for a 6 year old. He's very gentle. I guess that since they have been out with me from a young age that they have a sense of the plants. I'm very happy that they can now recognise some of the plants from the leaves, and they love spotting beans and tomoatoes in need of harvesting.


Potatoes are a really good thing for them to grow - you can just use sprouting tubers from your shop bought potatoes. WE used a big plastinc bag that had held potting compost. I did this with the junior infants class (age 4-5) in Dara's school, and they worked out very well. Last week we harvested, and got about 1.5 kilos from one bag. Harvesting was fun - I split the bag open in a wheelbarrow, and let them all root away - it was like buried treasure. then we cooked them and ate them with butter and herbs. Yum!

 

Here's a section of the boys raised bed - Not bad! Hope that they will eat the tomatoes - the only thing that they have knowingly eaten from the garden is potatoes. Tomato sauce hides a multitude.